Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

We’ve decided, after much discussion, to slow down on vegmonkey and the mrs. fro a while. We have so much on with other commitments at the moment (my job teaching being the main one and the mrs. is currently studying for a CIM course…a marketing qualification i’m told!) that time is really not there for a proper job to be done, and there’s nothing worse than a half-arsed blog!

There will be updates every now and again, maybe once every three weeks to a month, but nothing like as regular as the last year and a half.

We also, sort of, have taken on an allotment. It’s only three streets away from where we live, and is tendered by our good friend Mat. He got a call from some not so friendly allotment people recently who told him to sort out his weed problem! So we’ve agreed to work together on it. I got some onions in last weekend, but that’s about it for now, i think we will cover it for the winter although there was talk about trying to get some Kale in. With the garden here, and the allotment there, there may be quite a large amount of produce next year! More details to follow…

Finally, i’ve started a business to keep me entertained during the summer months when everyone is getting married and give me a little pocket money at www.bigeyephotography.co.uk. The second wedding has just gone up and i’m really happy with it…our friends seemed to be too! I just need to work out the best place in Cheltenham to advertise now…

So we aren’t disappearing, just taking a little break…i’ll update on the garden soon!

Well it’s how the Mrs does it anyway. I’m pretty crap at it if i’m honest, they end up sort of hanging off the string in no real semblance of order. I’m gonna write ‘we ‘ though cos i was there taking pictures! I’ve been meaning to post this for ages as there really isn’t a definitive guide online that i can find, so here it is!!! It’s a shame, they looked quite nice laid out on the wire rack.

We started with a piece of string that was about a metre and a half long and tied the ends together. We then hung it from the shed door so that we could easily tie the onions onto it.

The first one is the hardest. The neck needs to be wound in a figure of eight about 4 or 5 times, and then pushed down towards the bottom of the string. This will be the base of the string. Any surplus ends can be trimmed off when the string has been finished.

The second onion is wound in a figure of eight about 3 times, opposite the first one. This enables the onions to be evenly spaced around the string, rather than in one long line, and wil fit more on. I think it looks very ‘traditional’ like this, and looks great hanging off the kitchen door.

The third up to the last are the same. They need to be carefully wound round as shown below and pushed down towards the rest. Be careful not to leave any gaps as they will show up later.

I think we tied on about 25 - 30 onions onto the one string, which means they are now compact and easy to store…much better than bagging or tying them individually. The pic below show the finished onion string, tied before we trimmed all the rubbish and loose ends off, and after. I hope this has been useful, please leave a comment if it has…or even if it has not!

…and it tasted blummin’ fantastic. We put it in boiling water for about 5 minutes, took it out and ate it with a large knob of butter on our plate. The earwigs had just started to take hold, so i think we got it at just the right time!

As we were having some friends over, i decided to cook a roast dinner using as much as i could from the garden. The only thing we didn’t have was potatoes, as we’ve eaten our entire harvest! In the pic is squash, savoy cabbage, a load of spinach and ruby red chard, carrots, onions (red and white), beans, courgettes, sweet peppers and tomatoes.

We had a little turkey with it, but it was hardly spottable in the sea of veg!

The Uchiki Kuri squash hasn’t been as productive as i had hoped in the end, the two plants have only produced four biggish fruits so far, and have taken up quite a lot of space to do so. The courgettes have been so much more productive. I think next year (yep, i’m thinking about it already!) i’ll plant 4 squash plants, so they can just intertwine and grow over the whole space.

The ones we’ve had though have tasted absolutely amazing, a very unique taste, whether roasted or fried.

I really didn’t like any sort of cabbage up until recently when we visited a friends house and were served a delicious roast with a healthy serving of savoy cabbage. I am now converted, and made a point of grabbing some seeds at the start of the season and planting them!

There were two plants in the bed until i picked this one (beautifully modelled by the Mrs!), sitting quite happily under the brussel sprouts and broccoli plants. I thought they’d probably died until i went on a caterpillar hunt and saw this one ready to pick. The other has been pretty much nibbled to death by beasties, but the head may survive if i leave it to grow a little longer.

We steamed it over our beans, and it was very, very tasty…there’s something about the crinkliness of it…or am i just rambling!? One plant was enough for 6 serving, which is plenty of cabbage for one week.

I have to admit we didn’t grow these from seed, a quite small plant with a few flowers of was bought from our local small garden centre. I wouldn’t usually do this as i prefer to grow things from seed, as that way i know they are not diseased…i.e. club root on bought in Brassicas!

But this plant was 20p….so i obviously just couldn’t resist it.  Considering it has been sat on the table outside in the wind and rain for the last two months, in a smallish terracotta pot, it hasn’t done bad.

The peppers are not fully as i expected, they are a little longer and smaller. I’d like them to grow more before i pick them, but i’m worried they will start rotting on the plant soon. Maybe that is the size they get to, and i should just get stuck in!

I find sweetcorn a git to grow, when really i think it should be quite easy! Last year we had enough for one small bite while ripping the plants out of the ground to compost. It went in very late as the first sowing was munched to hell by slugs.

This year i had a similar problem. 85% of the new seed i bought didn’t germinate, 5% was eaten by beasties, so the four plants i had left went in the ground.  These has grown nicely, and very tall. They are planted in the cucurbit bed with the courgettes and squashes, as the sweetcorn is tall, and the others grow low down. This is similar to the three sisters method of growing, but i don’t like to overload the beds too much.

The silky threads that grow out of the end of each corn have started to shrivel and die off, which indicates that they are ready to harvest, but upon further inspection inside, the kernels are not fully developed yet. I was hoping to poke them to find out if the juice inside the kernels was milky (under ripe) or creamy (ripe). I think i’ll leave it another week before checking again…we really do need a little sun to help them along.

Upon harvesting, we will have 6 cobs from 4 plants, which i don’t think is bad going. Next year, i’m going to make it my personal mission to plant out at least 50 plants. I think the propogators might need to be totally devoted to sweetcorn to keep them covered.

The Brassicas growing under our enviromesh are doing well, although i think the small space has inhibited the plants ability to grow well and produce veg. I’m considering only growing big brassicas such as brussels and broccoli, if i get an allotment for next year. In a space of only 1.2m by 2.4m we have have a brussel plant, 3 purple sprouting broccoli, 2 savoy cabbage plants and a couple of caulis. They have grown well, with some small sprouts growing, but really, no space is available for them to grow properly.

The other option would be to grow them outside the netting. As can be seen from the above picture, i’m not sure that is possible in the country. Not only do the slugs munch at the emerging seedlings, but the growing plants are then destroyed by caterpillars. Needless to say both of these plants have been chopped up and binned. Visiting a friends allotment last week showed me that it isn’t just me though…i don’t think i saw a decent brassica the whole time i was there!

If i did decide to get rid of this part of the rotation, this bed would probably become a roots bed, to give more space to things like onions, carrots and parsnips that we eat a lot of.

We planted two Uchiki Kuri plants, having had a massive failure at growing squash last year (the sunflowers in the same bed took over!) I completely love the plants for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they are not too spiky like those horribly defensive courgette plants, and secondly, they look so nice sat in the bed, trying to escape towards the tomato plants and the onions!

The first fruit we had was small, and very orangy, this second one is much more what we expected. Big, yellow, and very, very tasty. We had it in a veg curry last night, with the last of the courgettes which are actually marrows!

There are currently 4 fruits on the plant, with 4 or 5 very small buds growing. It’s meant to be a good keeper too, so if we do get a mad rush of fruits towards the end of the year, they will keep well for a while, maybe even until Christmas Dinner!

As Monty is definately not coming back, it seems a new man has been put in place! His name is Toby Buckland according to the Gardeners’ World website.

The page describes his background as:

Having trained and worked as a rose and pinks nurseryman and gardener before qualifying in landscape management at Greenwich University.

His Ethical Garden at this year’s Gardeners’ World Live won him Gold and Best In Show.

Toby has presented and guest presented for many gardening shows, including Gardeners’ World Live, Home Front In The Garden, Real Wrecks for the BBC, RHS Garden Challenge and Weed It & Reap for UKTV Style.

After initially panicking that there was no mention of veg, produce or food in the article, i did a little more research and found this. Seems i shouldn’t have worried.